New Delhi: Union home minister Amit Shah has underscored India’s claim over Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) and said 24 seats were reserved in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly for representatives from the region as he blamed India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the delay in the integration of the erstwhile state with the rest of the country.
Shah’s comments came during his reply to the debate on two bills related to Jammu and Kashmir in the Rajya Sabha. The Jammu and Kashmir reservation (Amendment) Bill, 2023, and Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization (Amendment) Bill, 2023 were later passed by the Upper House with a voice vote.
“PoK is ours and no one can snatch it from us...” he said, adding that full statehood will be given to J&K at an appropriate time.
The Opposition walked out of the proceedings before the amendments to the bills were put to vote.
The J&K reservation bill seeks to provide reservation in jobs and admission in professional institutions to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other socially and educationally backward classes. The amendments seek to reword Section 2 of the Reservation Act to change the nomenclature of “weak and under privileged classes (social castes)” to “other backward classes” and make consequential amendments.
The J&K reorganisation bill provides for the reorganisation of the erstwhile state of J&K into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir (with an elected legislature) and Ladakh (without an elected legislature). It seeks to increase the number of seats to 90 from 83 in J&K assembly — a number fixed by the delimitation commission earlier this year. It also reserves seven seats for scheduled castes, nine for scheduled tribes, two for Kashmiri migrants and one for displaced people from PoK. In addition, 24 seats are reserved for PoK.
Shah hailed the Supreme Court’s verdict upholding the abrogation of Article 370 that bestowed special status to J&K, and lashed out at the Congress for not supporting the 2019 move. “If you (Congress) still want to stick to this (stand), PM (Narendra Modi) will become the PM for the third time.”
“The Supreme Court verdict is a historic decision and I welcome it. Now there will be only one Constitution, one flag and one PM,” Shah said.
He also quoted Nehru’s own statements to buttress his claims that taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations (UN) was an ill-conceived move. “Everyone knows that J&K’s accession to India was delayed as one person was given this task and that gave Pakistan an opportunity to attack Kashmir.” Had ceasefire not happened, there would have been no PoK,” he said.
Shah said Nehru admitted that more thought should have gone into the idea of a ceasefire. He also read out a quote from Sam Manekshaw, the then director of military operations, on the delay in sending out troops to stop the Kabali invaders who were on a rampage.
“I want to give a reference to Sam Manekshaw. He said at one place that when the Pakistanis were attacking Kashmir, then he was busy in discussions (don’t want to name the person). Sam Manekshaw was present at a meeting in which Sardar Patel told Nehru, “Do you want Kashmir or not?” Then the decision to send the army was taken,” Shah said.
While parties such as the Congress, the Trinamool Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) are opposed to repealing the special status, the Union government defends the move to read down Article 370 as constitutional, pointing out that the grant of special status was not a part of the standard Instrument of Accession Agreement signed in 1947 by the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir as well as by rulers of more than 500 other princely states and it was a temporary article in the Indian Constitution.
Reiterating the stand, Shah said, “I want to ask the followers of Nehru...Why did he prefix the word temporary....”
The minister also cited a quote where he said Nehru “accepted his mistake” of taking the Kashmir issue to the UN, and said, “After the experience of United Nations, I have come to the conclusions that no satisfactory results can be expected from there. I considered the ceasefire decision a good one, but we could not deal with this matter well. We should have had more thoughts on the ceasefire and taken it late. Though, these are the mistakes of the past.” This quote is of Jawaharlal Nehru. Unko toh manoge ya nahi manoge ki unhone galti ki. Accept this...(Nehru himself is accepting that he did a mistake)”.
The home minister, who had piloted the bill for the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, blamed it for fostering separatism and terrorism. “States like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar have larger Muslim populations than Kashmir. It wasn’t a border issue either… Gujarat shares a border with Pakistan. Why did separatism flourish in J&K? It was because Article 370 played a role in enabling and encouraging secession and that in turn promoted terrorism,” he said.
Underlining the changes that have been ushered in on the ground in the UT post 2019, Shah said the Union government has not only tackled terrorism, but has also dismantled the ecosystem that fostered it. “We have done the work of finishing the ecosystem of terrorism. 32 terrorism finance cases have been registered by SIT and 51 terrorism finance cases were registered by SIG. 229 arrests have been made in terror finance cases. Properties worth ₹150 crores have been seized and SIA has frozen 134 bank accounts with ₹100 crores in them,” he said.
Provisions such as not giving jobs to individuals whose family members are accused of stone pelting or other terror acts, he said, has helped bring down instances of stone pelting and the resultant casualties.
He said the Union government will not shy away from owning responsibility for the decision to abrogate Article 370. “If it’s a wrong decision...neither Modi, the cabinet or the party will run away from it. We take responsibility and own it, but also be ready to give an answer to the country because history spares none,” he said.
Speaking about the Opposition MPs‘ walkout, RJD MP Manoj Jha said, “I just said that there is no elected MP from Kashmir but he took it to somewhere else...The kind of speech the HM gave today lacked dignity... So our LoP Mallikarjun Kharge decided that we should walk out of the Parliament.”
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